When playing a main series game, how do you play?

Do you take your time to explore and catch every Pokémon you can in a route before pressing on? Continue through the story until you've beaten it and then go back to do what you missed and catch missing Pokémon? Or do you stop playing altogether once you've gotten through the story?

I do the second way you listed, almost all the time. :)

I like to take my time as well occasionally, but the feeling of making my current player character as accomplished as my previous ones is just too strong, so I press on. Would love to play it the first way for one of my first playthroughs, though! Maybe I could do that in Sword and Shield.

I make sure I catch every single Pokémon that's available to me at the time and raise it along with all of my other Pokémon. If I don't have the gear to be able to get it (life a fishing rod or something), then the moment I do I start at the beginning and work my way forward again until I know I've exhausted all available Pokémon in an area. I also do an obsessive amount of grinding. Pretty much have to, seeing as by later points in the game I've accumulated many Pokémon and still insist on training them all. Usually end up with about 6 to 8 teams I rotate.

What I used to do is just blaze past the story because I never really cared about it a whole lot, but then I realized that put a significant damp on how I enjoy the games. These days, I try to take my time and try not to rush too much into things. I really want to explore and see what kind of Pokemon are in a given route/area, and what kind of NPCs are around and how important they are, things like that!

I become less motivated to do these things if I just blitz past them and beat the game, because then I feel like I should be doing more of the post-game stuff since I've already missed out on a lot of the early/mid-game stuff that I should've done.

I usually start the game and play it for a couple weeks then lose interest and stop playing it for a couple years or maybe even 10 years. Then I might finish it later. I've only completed three games, Yellow and Crystal were both many years after I started. Y was completed in about 3 years.

I usually start out catching everything but at some point I just want to finish the game and only catch things that I might want on my team. Since I don't have as much free time I pretty much always stop at the end of the story. Sometimes I'll start up an old game just to walk around and listen to the music.

I usually play through the game and then go back after I finished the story and catch what I missed.

I only catch Pokemon I want on my team from each area, then once I have beat the game I go back and catch everything else.

i like organized playing. i usually go through the story naturally, building a good team but not necessarily catching every pokemon. i also try to explore areas as much as i can. but caves are my weakness hahahha. and about that organized playing, i follow the numbering of the routes e.g. route 1 --> town/city --> route 3 etc. etc.

My play style varies a bit by game, but I usually catch every Pokémon available and train them all as I go along. I don't tend to have a set team anymore; rather, I have a larger group of Pokémon that I rotate through. This allows me to keep Exp Share on (so that I don't feel like I'm wasting time that I would eventually need to train everything in the postgame) while preventing my team from becoming too overleveled. It does mean that I'm less attached to my starter than I used to be, though. I used to keep my starter in my party at all times, but if I use Exp Share, I keep having to box it, which I dislike.

Looking back at the various play styles I've used:

1. Blast through the main game with my starter. Catch a couple of Pokémon, but stick mostly to a solo run. Games: Red, Gold pre-E4

2. Build a team and use that. Catch a few other Pokémon, but don't focus on them until post-game. Blast through the story. Games: Gold post-E4, Silver, and to a degree, Yellow.

3. Catch everything available and train them all perfectly evenly. Prevent myself from progressing with the game until I hit arbitrary level cutoffs. The disadvantage to this is that I tend to take too long and never get through the story, or don't get through it for years. Games: Crystal, LeafGreen.

4. Train a team, or a group of more than six Pokémon, catch everything else, but don't necessarily have them all be at the same level. Gate progress somewhat to slow down gym progression and prolong the game (and because this is the style I use for the newer games, and I play them to help me fall asleep, so progress is often slow). Games: Pretty much everything from gen 3 (non-LG) to the present. This is my standard play style today.

My progress gating does vary a bit. I feel let down when I beat the game, so I tend to prevent myself from challenging gyms too often, and instead focus on breeding, training, etc. If I beat the E4 within a year of release, that's unusual, unless breeding options really are locked down until post game. I find that I often get 7 badges or so, then stall in finishing the game for months. (I stuck all of my games on Backloggery a couple of years ago, and apparently I have a habit of putting games down or stalling right before the final dungeon/boss across the board, not just for Pokémon.) That said, I seem to enjoy the games that I finish somewhat more quickly more than the others, so I wonder if I should change my approach a bit for gen 8.

I never really used to it when I was younger, but more and more now I find myself taking my time going through the game, doing as much as I can before continuing on. I might not catch every Pokemon available to me, but I remember in older games I might only have a couple of Pokemon in my box by the time I beat the Elite Four, and now I seem to have boxes worth.

I also try and pace myself through the game. I actually like Pokemon games for their stories, and I hate rushing through, because I just don't get the same value out of playing Pokemon games a second time as I do with some other series. It usually takes me a few months to finish a game if I'm really enjoying it, but there have been other times (Y comes to mind right away) where it takes me more than a year to complete it.

I dont like rushing things when playing so, I decide to catch a single pokemon and attempt to catch up with my starter (until some point to get EXP share) I go with the flow of things and try to enjoy the story as well often times I decide to end my journey and find a way to get a better replay value

if it's a new game, i play really slowly. i catch literally everything if i don't already have it in my pokedex, i tend to switch around team members often, and i talk to every npc. like. i play painfully slow. lol if i'm replaying a game though, i tend to only catch pokemon i've planned for my team and i just zip through and have fun raising my pokemon. i'm a simple man.

I am still new to the Pokemon game, i am still trying to adjust and learn how to make my Pokemon win against the opposite ones.

I catch all the poke on I can and try to train to certain levels in certain areas before I move on, and now that you get experience from catching pokemon I try to catch as many as I can for wonder trading

As for after game play I play for a little while I can't really get into it tho

In a new game I usually to whatever. I may not even bother with artifically increasing the difficulty. Blasting through is fair game on my first run. Subsequent runs I tend to restrict myself to a balanced party of six. Balanced includes an even distribution of HM moves, as well. I also try to come up with a meta narrative as main game stories tend to be boring (doesn't help that newer games focus a little too much on telling a story). I also try to avoid grinding and the overuse of TMs with overpowered moves. I try and see how far I come. I either beat the game that way or if the playthrough gets annoying I'll allow myself to do some grinding. However, I still try to be underleveled at the end of the game to keep a little bit of a challenge intact.

After the E4 my playthrough is usually over. I'm kinda over postgame content at this point.

I tend to take a kind of balances approach. I don't exactly try to blast through the story, but I don't go super slow either. I've found from past games that it kinda sucks to get through the whole story after just a couple days, so I try to find some other things to do, like some shorter shiny hunts, as I progress through the story. That typically gets my run to last a week or more so I don't feel like it was over way too fast. Once I'm done with the main story, I usually resort to a crap ton of shiny hunting, assuming I like the methods available in that game.

in most of my games (previous gens) - I breed my team in a completed game

when buying a new copy - I play with which ever starter I like, even if I'm not going to use, and play until I can trade
during that time, I try to avoid everything - especially the trainers if I can
*trade the eggs, spend long time hatching them (going in circles around the same town - usually the starter town)*
so all my team is at level 1

now I can start the team - battle every trainer, battle the wild Pokemon, and explore all around, taking my time for sure

I usually start over after I've done the main things (beat the gyms & elite 4). Other times, I'll try to build my dream team of dragon/fairy types. It really depends on the game and what's available for mons. I usually end up using my starter as well. I have a set team that I like most for each game.